Maybe someone will stop Duke before this college basketball season comes to a close at the Final Four.

That time was not Saturday night in their Elite Eight showdown with Alabama at the Prudential Center.

No. 1 seed Duke advanced to its 18th Final Four with an 85-65 win over No. 2 Alabama, sending the Blue Devils to San Antonio, where they will play the winner of Sunday’s game between Houston and Tennessee in the national semifinal.

Much the way Duke’s win over Arizona in the Sweet 16 game went Thursday night, Alabama delivered a game and gutsy performance, refusing to be put away by the Blue Devils until the very end.

But in the end, just like in the Arizona game, Duke (35-3, 31-1 in its past 32 games) was simply better.

Alabama trailed 65-57 with 8:03 remaining, still within striking distance.

That’s when Duke would pull away for good, ending the game on a 20-8 run.

Alabama never led in the game.

“San Antonio sounds great,’’ Duke coach Jon Scheyer said after advancing to his first Final Four as a coach in his third season. “We worked all year to get to the promised land, San Antonio for the Final Four. I couldn’t be more excited for these guys [the players].’’

Five of those players are freshmen, three of whom are starters.

“They’re mature,’’ Scheyer said. “Age is just a number. It’s obviously different to have three freshmen starting. Today, we played five freshmen on a team that’s going to Final Four. They’re loose, confident, competitive and not fazed by this environment.”

Two days after Alabama scored 113 points in its Sweet 16 win over BYU, the Crimson Tide were held to 48 fewer by a longer, more talented and deeper Duke team.

It was only the second time in 37 games this season Alabama (28-9) failed to score 70 points.

“The story of this game was the incredible job against such an incredible offense,’’ Scheyer said. “To hold them to 65 points is incredible after watching them play the other night with 25 3s. It was key for our guys to not get spooked by the 25 3s.”

The Blue Devils were led by freshman guard Kon Knueppel, who scored 21 points.

Fellow freshman star Cooper Flagg, who’s the certain No. 1 pick in the upcoming NBA draft, scored 16 points and had nine rebounds. Tyrese Proctor scored 17 and freshman 7-foot-2 center Khaman Maluach scored 14 points and had nine rebounds.

Alabama coach Nate Oats said before the game he didn’t even bother to recruit Flagg because he knew he had no chance to land him.

Oats did, however, recruit Knueppel and had said, “We did a pretty good job, but it wasn’t quite good enough,’’ adding before the game, “I’d like to have his shooting ability in our offense, but they have it. Now we’ve got to figure out how to guard it.”

In the end, Alabama wasn’t able to do that well enough.

For Alabama, the game was a massive offensive letdown from its win over BYU.

“Duke’s as a good a team as we’ve seen all year,’’ Oats said. “Obviously, we played really well two nights ago, and it’s tough 48 hours after that to play as poorly as we did. We played poorly and we got sent home.

“We still got some decent looks from 3 and we just didn’t hit them. It’s disappointing, because we’re supposed to be one of the best shooting teams in the country.’’

Oats is a former high school math teacher so he surely has some expertise in the law of probability.

And that had to make some people at least somewhat uneasy entering this game given the way his players shot the ball Thursday night.

His Crimson Tide shattered the NCAA Tournament record for 3-pointers in a game with those 25 (on 51 attempts) in the game.

Backing that shooting performance with another even close to it was akin to a professional golfer shooting a 62 in one round and trying to follow that with another super-low round the next day.

It rarely happens.

In the win over BYU, Alabama got a combined 76 points from Mark Sears (34 points, 10-for-16 on 3s), Aden Holloway (23 points, 6-for-13 on 3s) and Chris Youngblood (19 points, 5-for-11 on 3s), who combined to go 21-for-40 from long distance.

Want to tune into as much March Madness as you can? DIRECTV Stream and Hulu + Live TV both have you covered with every channel you’ll need, plus free trials.

Saturday night was a completely different story.

Those three combined for a total of 21 points and were a combined 3-for-16 from behind the arc.

Sears finished with just six points on 2-for-12 shooting, 1-for-5 from deep.

Holloway scored five points and was 2-for-8 from the field, 1-for-6 from downtown.

And Youngblood scored 10 points on 4-for-8 from the field, 1-for-5 from long distance.

“They did a good job taking away our 3-ball, and that’s something we did really well the other night,’’ Sears said.

Duke’s Sion James said it was a “by committee’’ defensive effort on Sears

“We were switching all game,’’ he said. “We made sure whoever was guarding the ball, we wanted to make sure Sears knew he wasn’t on an island by himself.’’